Crime Scene: February 13, 2011 - February 19, 2011

A Catholic priest who pleaded guilty to inappropriately touching an 11-year-old Fairfax County girl last year was sentenced Friday to nine months in jail.
Felix Owino, 45, was arrested in July after visiting a family in Herndon and watching a movie with them. The girl complained that Owino touched her over her clothes, and in September he pleaded guilty to aggravated sexual battery.

A plea hearing has been scheduled for Friday afternoon in the corruption case against Ted G. Loza, a former top D.C. Council staffer accused of accepting bribes, according to court officials. Loza was indicted in 2009 on charges of accepting...

A D.C. Schools spokesman said the school system had increased security at Ballou High School this week after a male student was injured Tuesday in an assault by a group of boys. Schools spokesman Fred Lewis did not give details...

A Fairfax County jury began its deliberations Thursday afternoon after hearing closing arguments in the capital murder trial of Mark E. Lawlor, accused of killing Genevieve Orange in her Falls Church area apartment in September 2008.
The jury deliberated for a little more than two hours, then decided to go home for the day. Since the trial has been taking Fridays off, to allow both the jurors and Fairfax Circuit Court Judge Jonathan C. Thacher to attend to other business, the jury will now take a four-day break, with the President's Day holiday on Monday postponing the case until Tuesday.

A former investigator for the D.C. tax office was sentenced Thursday to probation for participating in a scheme that allowed businesses to avoid paying more than $100,000 in taxes.Shelly-Ann Wicker pleaded guilty in November to accepting $1,800 in bribes in...

UPDATE: Prince George's County police detectives have launched an investigation into the Thursday discovery of skeletal remains in a wooded area in Morningside. Cpl. Henry Tippett, a Prince George's County police spokesman, said the remains were discovered just after noon...

Two of the four people believed to be connected to a botched robbery in Sterling last Thursday remain at large and are thought to be in the area, according to the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office. Police are asking for the...

A U.S. Capitol Police officer who was charged with pointing his gun at two members of a Michigan family after he and the tourists had mistakenly been given the same hotel room at National Harbor was found not guilty of...

D.C. homicide detectives are investigating a body that was found at the intersection of 14th and Downing Streets NE this afternoon. The victim is a male, police said, but no other information was immediately available. The location is near Brentwood...

Update, 3:20 p.m.: Prince William County police have identified the victim of Thursday morning's shooting outside of a Woodbridge Chick-Fil-A as 48-year-old Alice Jenkins Everette of the 17900 block of Swans Creek Lane in Dumfries. Police have charged her husband,...

Two Virginia businessmen were indicted in federal court Wednesday on charges of conspiring to illegally reimburse nearly $200,000 to donors of Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign and her 2006 Senate campaign....

Three men have been indicted on federal charges of trying to rob an armored car in Northeast Washington over the weekend -- a heist that was foiled just seconds before it took place, authorities said.In court papers, the FBI disclosed...

A federal appeals court upheld former NFL player Rae Carruth's conviction for plotting to kill his pregnant girlfriend, rejecting his claim that the jury was improperly swayed by statements made by the victim before she slipped into a coma and...

Henry County, Va., Sheriff Lane Perry says authorities continue to receive tips concerning the 2002 slayings of the Short family and he expects most of a $100,000 reward will continue. The reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction...

A cat in California has stolen hundreds of items from his neighborhood in recent years, according to this report: His owners say in the past three years, they figure he's stolen about 600 items, and he's not choosey. He'll take...

A four-alarm fire Tuesday damaged 10 units in an Alexandria apartment complex, city fire officials said. Fire burned through most of a three-story garden style building in the 6000 block of Edsal Road about 1:45 p.m., said Battalion Chief Dwayne...

Montgomery County police said a man was found dead inside of a Gaithersburg apartment, and a woman was injured during a domestic incident late Tuesday night, officials said. The injured woman was taken to a hospital, but the man was...

A sixth person has been arrested in the death of Latisha Frazier, 18, of Southeast Washington, D.C. police said Tuesday. Lanee Bell, 17, also of Southeast, was arrested Saturday on a booking order charging her with felony murder in the...

Update: One woman has been arrested and another is wanted in connection with a botched robbery in Sterling last Thursday that left one man dead and another wounded. Meanwhile, a third male suspect involved in the incident remains at large...

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II on Tuesday asked a judge to issue a rare writ of innocence to a prisoner who has spent 27 years behind bars for crimes prosecutors now agree he did not commit. Thomas Haynesworth, 45,...

The man arrested for briefly abducting a woman whose car he hid inside at a Prince George's County gas station was deported from the U.S. in February 2009 and had apparently made his way back into the country illegally, authorities...

Police in Prince George's County have arrested a D.C. man in connection with the fatal stabbing of his lover, who was found dead inside his apartment Sunday in Temple Hills, according to police and law enforcement sources. Eldridge Slaughter, 42,...

Police have identified the man fatally shot in Oxon Hill Monday night as 27-year-old Darian Michael Hinton of Suitland, authorities said. Police were initially called to the 5100 block of Deal Drive in Oxon Hill at about 11:35 p.m. for...

The Massachusetts man whose cocaine trafficking case led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling, and forced the Virginia General Assembly to hold a special session to amend state law, has been found not guilty by a jury near Boston.
Luis Melendez-Diaz was first convicted in 2004 of dealing cocaine, after police apparently found some of the drug in a car in which he was riding. But the proof that the white powder actually was cocaine came into court only through lab reports. The defense demanded the right to cross-examine the people who actually tested the powder, and in 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that defendants should have that right, in the now famous ruling of Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts.

On the same day that the Virginia General Assembly took steps to amend a misworded law regarding passing stopped school buses, Fairfax County police said bus drivers are reporting an alarming increase in the number of people ignoring their flashing...

A U.S. federal judge on Tuesday said she would consider an order that the social networking site Twitter must turn over three clients' personal information as part of the government's criminal investigation into WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Half a dozen...

A Prince George's County firefighter and medic who rescued a four-year-old girl from a burning Hyattsville apartment in February 2010 has won the Veterans of Foreign War's "2010 National Emergency Technician of the Year" award. Captain George F. Flanagan III...

An inmate at the St. Mary's County Detention Center threatened a judge and a state's attorney after breaking a television set, according to the county sheriff's office. Inmate Antonio W. Gantt, 43, of Leonardtown, pulled a television off the wall...

Anne Arundel County Police have charged two people with trying to carjack a neighbor at knifepoint. Forty-seven-year-old Conley Bell and 39-year-old Charity Lowe have been charged with attempted kidnapping, attempted armed carjacking and other offenses....

A man was found fatally shot late Monday night in the Oxon Hill area of Prince George's County, police said. He was found about 11:20 p.m. in the 5100 block of Deal Drive. The death appeared to be the third...

A Michigan woman who tried to steal $600 worth of electronics was caught when her motorized cart got stuck, according to this report: Investigators said Perkins was attempting to leave the Rochester Road Meijer with more than $600 worth of...

Update, 8 p.m.: Prince George's County police arrested a man who hid in the back seat of a car when the driver went to get gas and then forced her to drive a short distance away, authorities said. The woman...

Shannon L. Wren really didn't want to be drug tested as a condition of his pre-trial release on federal charges of trafficking in counterfeit computer circuits and selling them to the U.S. Navy -- and he concocted an unusual plan...

A U.S. Capitol Police officer who allegedly pointed a handgun at two members of a Michigan family who had been mistakenly given the same hotel room is scheduled to go on trial Tuesday in Circuit Court in Upper Marlboro. Victor...

Charles County police have arrested a woman in the shooting death of a man she had allegedly been arguing with in an apartment. Eric Lamont Washington, 44, of Bryans Road, was killed after being shot at 3:30 a.m. Sunday in...

Two middle school girls told school officials that a stranger offered them rides as they stood at separate bus stops in the Dumfries area Monday morning, then fled when they declined to get into his van, Prince William County Police...

Two men shot by D.C. police during an alleged home invasion on Sunday night in Brookland are dead, police said Monday. Police said Davon Sealy, 19, of Gaithersburg, died Monday morning at an area hospital. Akeem Jamaal Cayo, 21, died...

Former Prince George's County Executive Jack B. Johnson was indicted on Monday in federal court in Maryland on eight charges, including bribery, witness and evidence tampering and aiding and abetting. Johnson, 61, a former prosecutor who was the county's top...

The U.S. Park Police hope someone will come forward to help investigators identify the man whose body was found earlier this month in a wooded area in Temple Hills, authorities said. The man, who police believe died from natural causes,...

Police in Alexandria are seeking the public's help identifying remains found by a dog on Saturday morning. A dog out for a walk with its owner found what appeared to be skeletal remains in a wooded area around Ford's Landing,...

Two teens who robbed and beat a 59-year-old man and tried to run away were chased and stopped by bystanders who saw the crime, Anne Arundel County police said Monday. The incident happened just after noon on Saturday near Hammonds...

A Prince William County man crashed his truck into a curb, causing it to flip and partially throw him out of the car and to his death, police said. Nana Kwadwo Nsiah, 24, of Dumfries, was driving a 1996 GMC...

A Baltimore police spokesman says a man was shot in the elbow in road-rage incident after leaving a nightclub. Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi says the shooting occurred early Sunday next to the city's impound lot near Interstate 83....

A federal appeal hearing is set for a death-row inmate who ordered the murder of his ex-girlfriend because he was angry about child support payments. The Daily News-Record reports arguments are set for Monday in U.S. District Court in Charlottesville...

A Newport News man has been charged with three counts of capital murder in connection with the slayings of three people at a home in central Virginia. Authorities arrested Rashad Matthew Riddick, 23, without incident Sunday evening at a hotel...

Thieves broke into a store in Canada and took a 700-pound safe -- with nothing in it, according to this report: "It's really oddball. That safe is 700 pounds. We had to put it in a crane truck to get...

At least one person was shot and wounded late Sunday in the Brookland area of Northeast Washington after police were sent to investigate a possible burglary. The incident occurred about 11 p.m. in the 1000 block of Irving Street NE,...